


Perilous Business

by SidheRa



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pacific Rim (2013), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Past Natasha Romanova/James Barnes, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Canon, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-20 18:24:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SidheRa/pseuds/SidheRa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, <i>robusta acri militia puella</i></p>
<p>A Clintasha-Pacific Rim au (with apologies to Horace).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. dulce et decorum est pro patria mori**

**Author's Note:**

> For [arms-and-arrows](arms-and-arrows.tumblr.com), who asked for a Clintasha Pacific Rim au. She asked, and I delivered. 
> 
> If you're interested in the framing device, check out Horace, _Odes_ , III.2

“Widow, it's behind us!” James shouted, even though he didn't need to. He was brash, even for an American, and he'd never quite broken the habit of speaking out loud when they were drifting. 

Not like Yelena. Natasha couldn't remember if they'd ever said anything to each other when they were linked.

She rolled her eyes pointedly at James, knowing he could feel her reaction even if he couldn't see it. They turned as one, moving the jaeger as smoothly as something the size of a building could move.

“I told you not to call me that, Barnes,” she said, and they raised their arm to grab hold of the kaiju by the neck.

He laughed.

“Just admit it already, _Widow_.” he said, emphasizing the nickname. “I know you like it. I'm in your head, remember?”

As if she could forget.

“Hey, I heard that!” he said, but then the kaiju roared and the time for banter was over.

Every step the _Vdova_ took, every little inch forward, the kaiju pushed them back twice that, and before long, they weren't fighting at sea, but at the docks.

Natasha cursed violently in her head, and James tried to soothe her (she could feel the warm caress of his hands on her back as clearly as if he were actually touching her) but it was no good because they couldn't maneuver, they couldn't move their hands and the kaiju was going to . . .

The screech of metal tearing exploded in the air, and she screamed as it echoed through her head and James'. The wound ( _not a wound, Natalia, you're inside a robot_ ) felt like her own skull had been torn open, like there was a gaping hole exposing her brain.

Claws reached in, rending metal (flesh), and she was panicking too much to do anything more than flail.

_not again not again not again not again_

James screamed once, and it was different this time because he was being pulled up and out and tossed. For a moment, it felt like she was flying.

Then blackness.

***

Natasha woke up two weeks later in the infirmary, not knowing how she got there.

The nurse who was checking her vitals, gave her a pitying look before she hurried from the room.

“James?” she asked the director when he arrived seemingly instantly at her bedside.

Udinov said nothing, which was really all she needed to know.

***

She began to develop a theory when she was confined to her bed in the med bay. Very few people came to visit her – James had been her only friend and her parents lived far away – so she had plenty of time to think.

Natasha decided that _Chernaya Vdova_ was cursed. It was the only thing that made any sense.

She'd grown up with her first partner, raised inside the training facility affectionately dubbed the Red Room after the color of its walls. Like all the other pilots she knew, she'd been taken from her parents when she was ten, and put into the program alongside dozens of other girls from Russia and the ex-Soviet nations.

Day after day, year after year, she'd trained, forcing herself to be better, faster, stronger than all the other girls. She was small for her age, but she never gave up, would never, could never, and when the time came, there was only one other girl who even held a candle to the infamous Natalia Romanova.

On good days, Natasha would admit that Yelena Belova was the blonde version of herself – calm, athletic, and lethal. They despised each other with a passion only rivaled by their mutual hatred of the building sized monsters that came from the sea, and they channeled that anger into teamwork like no other.

They were a deadly team.

Six kaiju dead, all told, by the time a seventh rose up out of the deep. She and Yelena were cocky, with good reason, and they were sure that this seventh would fall like all the others.

Yelena Belova did not come back that day.

Natasha had expected that to be the end of it. Her drift partner was dead, the _Vdova_ was half-slag, and she was far too headstrong to find someone else who was even close to compatible. She wanted to get back out there, of course, she did, but what was the chance of that?

The Red Room scraped her back together the same way they put her jaeger to rights, piece by piece, bolt by bolt. Natasha didn't expect much to come from the trials, didn't expect to find anyone, but the director was willing to try anything by this point because Natasha was too good and the _Vdova_ was too important to the war effort.

The Room was so desperate they went to the Americans.

James Barnes was something of a revelation. Tall and strong and beautiful, Natasha had never felt anything quite like it, and when she first laid eyes on the man, she knew he was her match. When they drifted together, it was nothing like it had been with Yelena, but then how could it be? She and Yelena hadn't been so much “drift compatible” as they were “drift reconcilable”.

She hadn't loved Yelena.

It didn't matter how good they were together, though, because James was dead, and in the middle of the night when his screams in her head were loudest, it felt like she'd lost half her mind with him.

Maybe she had. 

 

_**It is sweet and proper to die for the fatherland_


	2. mors et fugacem persequitur virum**

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet Clint.

Even months after James died (the doctors here maddeningly referred to his death as “the incident”), her limbs were weak. She had twinges in her joints, and it took too long to get out of bed in the morning. For the first time in her life, Natasha was not sure she would rise above.

The moment she’d had that thought was the moment she’d redoubled her efforts.

She’d been a feature at the gym for weeks, lifting and running and pretending that she would not be relegated to ribbon-cuttings and the talk show circuit for the rest of her life. No one had approached her for anything else since she’d gotten here, and as loathe as she was to admit it, she was glad. She was raised to throw her entirety into the jaeger program, and now that she was done, it was a relief that she did not have to say it to anyone, that she did not need to admit her failure out loud.

That relief lasted until Director Udinov interrupted her Tuesday morning date with the weight bench.

“Your country needs you, Romanova,” the director said.

As if that made a difference.

She put the barbell back in its rest and sat up.

“My country does not have a working jaeger for me to pilot,” she said blandly. She couldn’t resist adding, “If I truly am needed.”

Director Udinov handed her a slim file. She paged through it, moving more quickly as she rapidly determined the director’s purpose in coming here. The photographs were astonishing, but they were hardly going to convince her to pick up where she left off.

“As you can see,  _Chernaya Vdova_  is operational,” Udinov said. Natasha stood abruptly and shoved the folder back at him, smacking it against his chest.

“No, I can’t see,” she said. “Those could have been taken at any time. Years ago, maybe.”

“They were taken two days ago, Romanova,” he said. “ _Vdova_ is waiting for you.”

“You don’t need me for this. I am not your pilot anymore.”

She turned on her heel and stalked off toward the shower room. Udinov and the Room would not draw her back in like they had last time, with promises of upgrades and a new partner. Her day was done, she was a pilot no more. They would find another suitable pair for  _Chernaya Vdova_ , people who were not her, and if her heart felt the tiniest pang of regret in this moment, she ignored it.

She would not drift. Not again.

“Natasha!” Udinov called loudly, breaking her out of her self-pity and drawing stares from the other people in the gym. He would only press the issue if she ignored him, so she turned back.

“I said no,” she said firmly. “I meant it.”

He approached her and handed her another, smaller sheaf of papers. Train tickets.

“I am not asking you to make up your mind here,” he said with more than a touch of pity in his voice. She felt her hackles rise, but she still took the tickets rather than let them fall to the ground.

“You want me to find another partner. Someone to replace … Someone to drift with me. I don’t think this is possible,” she said. Surely he couldn’t think that lightning would strike twice? Surely he couldn’t think that she would even want to try?

Udinov nodded slowly. “Yes, maybe you are correct, Natasha. Maybe there is no one else. But why don’t you come see her for yourself?”

***

She’d thrown away the tickets three times only to fish them right back out of the trash. In the end, her training had been too thorough and her heart too curious to ignore the promise of seeing her jaeger rebuilt.

Even if she would not pilot it.

Before she drove herself crazy with the indecision, she packed her bag, checked herself out of the rehab facility, and got on the train back to the only place she’d ever called home.

The Red Room hadn’t changed in her time away. Everything moved with the same efficiency as it always had, and as soon as she’d dropped her bag off in her new quarters, she’d been ushered down to the flight deck.

Sparks were flying from  _Chernaya Vdova_  when she walked in, and a crew of blue suited workers hung from cables and teetered atop thin scaffolding as they welded pieces to her hull.

She’d never looked more beautiful.

Her escort left her with the director, saluting as he returned to whatever duties comprised his day.

“You lied,” she said to Udinov, never taking her eyes off the  _Vdova._

“I did?”

“You said she was fully operational,” she said, gesturing up toward the jaeger. “Looks like there’s still a lot of work to be done.”

Udinov laughed, as if he’d known what she was going to say.

“The man who rebuilt her might have something to say about that,” he said. “I’d like you to meet Clint Barton, on loan to us from the Americans.”

She pried her eyes away from  _Vdova_  to find that they’d been joined by a second man who was wiping his hands on a rag. He was of average height and build, but something about his forearms and neck indicated that he was hiding well-toned musculature underneath the oil-stained t-shirt he had on.

_Someone who worked for a living, then,_ she thought approvingly.

He threw the dirty cloth over his shoulder and offered Natasha his hand.

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

She took his hand, but her eyes were already back to her jaeger, pulled there by some unseen magnetic force, compelling her to watch the work being done to the machine, hovering over it as if she were a mother hen. It was nsane that she should feel such ownership, now more than ever. From all accounts, less than a quarter of the machine in front of her could have been original. The kaiju had seen to that.

“So you did all this?” she said to Barton. “You fixed her up?”

Barton laughed. “Well, that and some other things.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Other things?”

“Yeah, I installed a few upgrades while re-outfitting the  _Chernaya Vdova,”_ he said, butchering her language. He nodded toward the jaeger. “They’re actually putting in one of the apparatus right now, if you wanna stick around and watch.”

She looked up and frowned at the sight of a crane slowly guiding a large metal object toward the right flank of the jaeger. There really was no mistaking the shape.

“That’s a bow.”

Barton nodded proudly, standing back with his hands on his hips. “Ain’t she a beauty? You should see some of the stuff we’ve been developing at Stark Industries. We’re working on a sword …”

She cut him off, already having heard enough. “ _Vdova_  doesn’t need a bow. Why did you give her a bow?”

Something in her tone must have gotten through his thick skull, because he blinked slowly at her as if she were stupid.

“Because bows are awesome?”

Natasha hoped the people Udinov found to pilot her jaeger were more amenable to change than she.

***

Barton sat down with her at breakfast the next morning, pulling out a chair ( _James’ seat, Yelena’s seat, not his seat_ ) and plunking down his tray.

She eyed him warily. What the hell did a damn tech want with her anyway? She’d already given him her opinion on the upgrades.

“Thought you could use some company,” he said, as if he were reading her thoughts. She bit back a scowl. He would not get her to react, even if he was the only person around here stupid enough to try to talk to her before her coffee had kicked in.

He flinched as he sat down. The flicker of pain in his eyes wasn’t lengthy or particularly noticeable, but Natasha had become well-familiar with the many and varied signs of pain during her stints in rehab. He moved past it quickly, though, and she’d be willing to bet that the injury was old.

“You thought wrong,” she said acerbically, but he just laughed and dug into his pancakes. His breakfast was drenched in syrup and butter, and not for the first time, she wished for the old days of the Red Room, when the canteen staff didn’t cater to the taste preferences of half a dozen countries. She might have only gotten oatmeal and stew back in those days, but at least she didn’t have to eat it in front of a diabetic coma waiting to happen.

“I’ve heard of you, you know,” he said in a tone that made her notice. She looked up from her eggs.

“Everyone’s heard of me,” she said.

He chuckled, reaching for the salt. “Fair enough.”

He tried his potatoes, made a face, and added a bit more salt to them. Philistine.

She tried to ignore his first comment because it didn’t really matter, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What have you heard?”

“All the usual stuff,” he said after a minute. “That you’re a great pilot, that you don’t hesitate in front of the kaiju.”

That last wasn’t strictly true, but he didn’t need to know that.

“They also said that you’re looking for a new co-pilot.” He spoke so calmly, carefully restricting his tone to one of feigned nonchalance that she knew there was another meaning hidden in there, if she could work it loose.

“Who’s ‘they’?” she asked because she was tired of denying the rest of it.

He shrugged. “Oh, you know. People.”

She heroically managed not to roll her eyes.

“I’m not looking for a co-pilot,” she said. “I’m here strictly as a consultant.”

“So why is Udinov only looking around for single pilots?” he said around a mouthful of pancake and potato.

“He is an old man with crazy ideas. How should I know?” She stabbed at her eggs with more force than strictly necessary. She’d told the old bastard that she wasn’t interested. It would be nice if he’d listened.

“He’s got a list of candidates as long as my arm waiting for you.”

She scoffed. “I’m not getting back into the cockpit.”

“Aren’t you?” he asked, tilting his head to one side. “I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to get back inside one of those things.”

“Well, maybe I’m not anyone, then,” she said. She slugged the rest of her coffee, and then she added, “I don’t know where he found anyone crazy enough to go out there with me.”

“I’m on that list,” Barton said quietly. For a moment, she was baffled that anyone could think this guy, this mechanic with an taste for archaic weaponry and clogged arteries could possibly be drift compatible with her. Yelena had been brought up in the program, the same as her, and James, well, no one could deny that James had been special. But this guy? He belonged on the ground, not in the drift.

“Have you ever even been in a jaeger before?” she asked him at last, failing to keep the surprise out of her voice.

“Yes.”

She raised her eyebrow in disbelief.

“As a pilot?”

His mouth worked itself open and closed a few times.

She snorted and picked up her tray. “Didn’t think so.” She stood abruptly. She had better things to do than waste her time with this guy.

“Get over yourself,” he said. She stopped in her tracks.

“What did you say?” she said, incensed that this … this …  _idiot_  would dare to talk to her like that.

Barton either never heard about her temper or he just didn’t care because he actually got up and walked toward her as he repeated himself.

“You heard me just fine, Romanova,” he said, and she could see that he was almost as angry as she was. “I know you’ve lost people out there …”

“You don’t know!” she said, uncomfortably aware of how close she was to shouting.

“I’ve lost people, too. Everyone has.”

Unbridled rage swept hot over her, flushing her skin and taking away her breath. She slammed her tray back down on the table next to her.

“I was connected to them both when they died! I was there! I felt it! You don’t have a fucking clue what it was like!”

He got right in her face. “So what?”

“So what?  _So what_?! What is your fucking problem …”

“You want to know what my fucking problem is? Do you, Romanova? Cause I’ll tell you!”

“Go ahead,” she said, daring him to name her.

He did.

“My fucking problem is a woman too stubborn to realize that she needs to get her ass back in a jaeger!” He was practically shaking now, his hands vibrating as he spoke. “You’ve got a chance to do something good, something ninety-nine percent of the world would kill to do, and you’re throwing it away because you’re afraid.”

She balled her fist. “Fuck you, Barton,” she hissed dangerously. “You don’t know the first thing about what it means to pilot a jaeger. Even if I wanted to get back up there, it’s impossible. The  _Vdova_  is a curse.  _I_  am a curse. No one is going to get in there with me.”

He shook his head, the motion robbing his expression of its former vehemence, and it looked like he might actually laugh, the son of a bitch.

“I’d go with you,” he said. “I think we’d make a good team.”

She laughed, a cold noise that echoed in the canteen.

“I met you yesterday, Barton. Where did you come up with that theory?”

There was no way they were compatible, no way they were even the “good enough” she’d been with Yelena. There were only so many people in the world who could handle a jaeger, and among them, there were a precious few who could cede control enough to work as a unit. She would know.

“There were tests, you know. My name didn’t wind up on that list just because I’m handsome and charming. I worked for it. Same as you.”

She wanted to hit him, and she could, too. It was so tempting …

Then he said, “Maybe if you’d stop spending so much time living in the past, you could actually do some good.”

She’d had enough.

She went for him, fists flying, expecting to make contact with his face or his gut or somewhere, anywhere that would make him hurt the way he’d hurt her.

He sidestepped at the last moment, brushing her fists away like they were nothing.

“You want to do this, then?” he asked, raising his arms to defend himself. “Let’s get this over with.”

Snarling, she lunged again, this time coming in low, aiming for that knee she’d seen him favor when he sat down with her. This time, he couldn’t get away from her. This time, he shouted and dropped to the ground.

There was no time to gloat or even to feel satisfied because he grabbed her leg and pulled her to the ground. She slammed to the floor with a grunt, refusing to shout even though she felt the impact in her teeth. She bit the inside of her mouth to remain composed.

They grappled there on the floor, and the other people in the canteen made their way over to the spectacle one by one, crowding around them to watch.

Natasha was so angry that it took her a good five minutes to realize that they were at a stalemate, that neither one of them was going to come out on top here. For every blow she landed, she received one in turn, every time she put him in a choke hold, he slipped it and returned the favor.

It was like he was reading her mind.

_Shit_ , she thought, knowing exactly what that meant.

She rolled off him and onto her back, sore from the exertion. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Clint tense up, but when she didn’t attack him, he relaxed backward.

“So what do you think?” he asked at last. “Drift compatible?”

She pushed herself to her feet, then offered him her hand.

“Buy me dinner first, then maybe I’ll answer the question.”

_**robusta acri militia puella** _ _-_ _The girl, matured in/powerful because of harsh military service_

_**Death follows even the fleeing man_

_The Latin comes from Horace,_  Odes,  _iii.2._ All _Latin translations are my own._


	3. 3. nec parcit inbellis iuventae poplitibus timidove tergo*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, in the early hours before dawn, Natasha dreamed about them.

Sometimes, in the early hours before dawn, Natasha dreamed about them.

The first time, years ago, Yelena had intruded on a particularly nice dream about a beach and a walrus that Natasha somehow knew was named Pete. She and Pete were wading in the surf, skipping stones and talking about ballet when Yelena appeared beside her to inform her that walruses couldn't talk and what the hell did Natasha know about ballet anyway?

Natasha had woken up disoriented and foggy, but James was there beside her, and she'd forgotten about Yelena and Pete and smooth stones.

She was washing her feet in the sink when James walked up behind her.

“You need to get back in the saddle,” he said, using one of those infuriating idioms that she understood but despised.

“It's too late right now,” she said, working on the spaces in between her toes. “We'll go in the morning.”

James looked at her sadly, like she was missing the point, and for a moment, she was paralyzed in the reflection of his gaze. A weight crushed her chest, and she thought she was overlooking something important about the conversation, but she didn't remember what it was. There was something off, something wrong, and every time she thought she had a hold of the idea, it slipped away from her.

She shook herself.

“It's okay to move on,” he said. “You should find a new pilot.”

A new pilot? What was wrong with James, she wondered. She reached for the towel, her fingers brushing the edge of the faded blue terrycloth. She was momentarily distracted from her task by a beeping that pierced the air, and she dropped her hand. What was going on?

James pulled the towel from the rack and handed it to her.

“I like the mechanic, by the way.”

The beeping that had been mere background noise turned louder, more insistent. It wasn't the kaiju siren, but she knew it was still important, if only she could remember why. She felt dizzy all of a sudden, and the world began to blur around the edges. James, who'd been so solid only a moment ago, started to fade out along with the walls around her.

“You should give him a chance.”

Natasha sat bolt upright in bed, smacking the alarm clock until it stopped its racket. She rubbed her hand against her face to dispel some of the grogginess, and her fingers came away damp.

She stared at it in wonder, realizing that she must have been dreaming, even if she couldn't remember the contents. She slung her feet over the edge of the bed and headed for the shower. Maybe the heat would clear her mind.

Under the spray of the shower, one phrase kept repeating in her mind. She couldn't place it, couldn't remember who'd said it to her, and she would have shrugged it off except that it seemed paramount, carrying the weight of advice that she should take to heart.

 _You should give him a chance_.

***

A knock came not long after she'd showered, and when she opened the door, she found one of the lower-ranking troops waiting for her with a note in hand. She took it and dismissed the young woman.

She peered at the memo, blinking at it for a couple seconds, not quite believing what she was seeing.

Command had ordered her to the simulation room to begin the screening process. Not for the first time, she felt like she was on a roller coaster, one that kept circling the track, never letting her off. She never should have come back here.

The simulation room had been built back in the early days of the program, when the Room had used it for training the girls. They'd needed a way to tether the candidates together, to let them drift without committing a billion dollar machine to the experiment. If Udinov had ordered her to the simulation room, that meant she'd be drifting today, and judging by the length of the list, she'd be in the cockpit for a while.

The mere thought gave her a headache.

She ran into Barton (no,  _Clint_. He'd insisted at dinner in the mess last night) outside the simulation room. He smiled when she approached.

“Oh, hey! I was hoping you'd show up!” he said cheerily, and she wondered if he was always this chipper or if he reserved it for people he'd punched.

Thoughts of getting physical brought other, less appropriate thoughts into her head unbidden, ones she shoved down deep inside. James was dead, had been for a while now, but it still felt like a betrayal.

She plastered a fake smile on her face. “Good morning.”

He held the door open for her, which was . . . sweet, she supposed, if it a bit archaic.

“You here for tests?” he asked, following her with his hands shoved in his pockets. She tried not to be distracted by the way the pose made his forearms stand out.

“Udinov asked me to go through the first group of candidates today,” she said with a nod. The director's request had been more of an order, really, but everything was so much nicer when you could pretend that you had a choice.

“What changed your mind?” Clint asked, clearly referring to the way she'd continued to protest even after they'd talked last night.

She could say any number of things – orders were orders, the excitement over being back at the Room had overcome her reluctance, maybe even nostalgia or an inability to trust anyone else inside  _Chernaya Vdova_. She knew he'd accept whatever she threw at him, anything, really, except maybe the truth, which was the phrase that had been plaguing her all morning:

_You should give him a chance._

Settling for bravado where honestly would fail, she met Clint's gaze without flinching and said, “Curiosity.”

He let out a short bark of laughter. “Curiosity?”

“I wanted to see if you were really as good as you claim to be.”

It sounded weak, even to her, but Clint didn't catch on. He grinned widely.

“Oh, baby, I'm even better.”

***

She'd tried, she really had, but out of the ten candidates slated for today, she couldn't make a connection with the first nine. It was like reaching out to take someone's hand, only to run at full speed into a brick wall.

Barton was waiting for her when she stepped out of the simulator to take a breather.

“Any luck?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I'm oh for nine,” she said, borrowing one of James' old phrases. “I have a feeling whoever the tenth person is won't be any better.”

“Maybe they'll surprise you,” Clint said with a peculiar look in his eye.

Until that moment, she'd assumed he'd been here to talk shop with the lab techs, maybe get them to program in the specs on the weapons upgrades he'd made. Now, though, the coincidence of his presence here when she was running through the candidates slid into place with everything else she knew about him.

“You're number ten, aren't you?”

“The one and only!” he said. “Ready whenever you are.”

She held back a sigh. She knew enough about herself to recognize that she was nursing a school-girl crush on the guy, and the moment they connected, he would know that about her. He would know everything about her, every small detail of her life, same as she would about him.

She was launching into another round of self-pity when she realized that she'd been thinking of it as a given that they'd be compatible, that the connection would be strong.

She was already thinking of him as her new co-pilot.

“When was the last time you drifted?” she asked, trying to cover up her discomfort.

Clint scratched the back of his bed. “Uh, about that.”

“Shit, Barton,” she stopped in her tracks and rounded on him. “I thought you said you've done this before?”

He laughed nervously. “I have,” he said, not quite meeting her eyes. “In computer simulation.”

“With the computer?” she said incredulously. Every single person at the Room had drifted with the damn computer; it was a requirement of working in the facility.  _Anyone_  could drift with a computer, but interfacing with another human was what made the jaegers move.

She let out a short snort. “Well, uh, it's a little different when you're with another person.”

He smirked, back to his old self already. He sure was a cocky son of a bitch.

“Just like sex, right?”

“I can't believe I agreed to do this with you,” she muttered, but Clint took it good naturedly, laughing appreciatively as he had before.

“What does it feel like?” he asked when she bent over the water fountain.

“With a person?” she said, even though he couldn't possibly mean anything else.

“Yeah. What's it like to have someone else inside your head?”

 _Horrible_ , she thought.  _Invasive and grating and terrifying. Like coming home._

“No one can describe what it's like, Clint,” she said instead. “It's something you have to experience for yourself.”

They began walking back toward the simulation chamber.

“What's it feel like to you, then?” he asked.

“It's like . . . It's like trying to do calculus longhand while you're dancing,” she said, struggling to find the right words. She didn't know why, but there was an urgency to making him understand. “Or maybe like doing gymnastics and reading Dostoyevsky.”

He laughed. “Okay, so don't tell me.”

“Come on, that was the best I've got!” she said. “What does it matter? You'll get there soon enough.”

“Or I won't,” he said, naming the thing they'd been avoiding. “Maybe I'll be just like the other people on your list. We don't know if we're compatible.”

So, he'd noticed, too. They'd been assuming a lot ever since they'd fought in the cafeteria.

“Yeah, well, I've got a feeling about that,” she said, and the words were there in her head again, like a broken record.

 _You should give him a chance_.

He held the door open for her. “Yeah, I've got a feeling, too.”

“Don't get all mushy on me, Barton. Let's get this show on the road.”

She led him over to the benches and handed him a spare suit and helmet from one of the cubbies.

“Here, you gotta put this on before they'll let you climb in the simulator.”

He held up the spandex gingerly. “How come I don't get a suit like yours?”

“I'm special, so they give me the fancy stuff,” she said, and she gestured with her chin in the direction of the broom closet. “You can change in there.”

He grimaced but headed in that direction anyway. As he closed the door behind him, he said, “If I get a wedgie, I am holding you accountable.”

***

“I feel ridiculous in this,” he said when came out of the closet five minutes later. He had his hands on his hips, and he gestured down at his feet. “Did you give me the kid's version or something?”

He wasn't far off. The pants on the jumpsuit only reached the bottom of his calves, which was probably because the suits had originally been bought for training program back when she was a kid.

“I don't know. I think you pull off the look,” she said, hiding a smile in her hand. He did pull it off, too, surprisingly enough. She knew now that she hadn't been wrong when she'd first met him – he had a nice body underneath all those ratty t-shirts and worn jeans.

“Where's the rest of it?” he asked, gesturing at the harness and boots she wore.

“Spare gear is over in the bin by the door.”

The harness and boots he retrieved were necessary parts of the uniform. The simulator was a one-to-one replica of the mark one jaeger that the Kaidanovskys piloted. Maybe it looked kind of silly all put together, but if you wanted to use the simulator, there was no other way.  

Since he was finishing getting outfitted, she used the time to take off her chest plate and readjust the straps. The damn thing had never quite fit right, and it liked to slide out of position if she wasn't vigilant. Since she had a feeling that she might be in the cockpit for a little longer with him than some of the other people she'd seen today, she thought it might be a good idea to make sure that didn't happen on this run.

“Son of a bitch,” he hissed under his breath. He'd been pulling on his boots, but he'd stopped short and was rubbing his knee.

“I've seen you favor that leg before,” she said with a nod in his direction. She tugged her chest strap tighter. “What happened?”

Clint hesitated before he responded. “Factory accident.”

She stood and hefted her chest plate, sliding it on over her head and cinching the buckles. “Care to elaborate?”

“No point, right? You'll see all of it soon enough,” he said.

Well, he was right.

She left it alone and helped him finish getting his suit on. For all his braggadocio about testing well and repeatedly, it was clear he'd never put on a Russian suit before. The Americans used thinner materials, claiming that if the pilot ever needed the armor, it was too late for them anyway.

The first time she'd lost a partner, Natasha had woken up in the rehab facility with a gash straight down the center of her chest and belly. If it hadn't been for her body armor, that gash would have cut her in two.

Natasha was a big fan of Russian-style suits.

“You okay?” she asked, swallowing down the lump in her throat. “I'm ready when you are.”

He stood. 

 

 

* _nec parcit inbellis iuventae poplitibus timidove tergo -_ Nor does (death) spare the limbs or cowardly back of an unwarlike youth.

Latin Translations, as always, are my own. 


	4. Parthos ferocis vexet eques metuendus hasta*

At first, it was like wading through jello.

She'd been in the drift before, of course, so the sensation of swimming through a solid didn't faze her. Yelena had hated that phenomenon, had said that it made her feel sticky afterward and nothing but a scalding hot shower could make her clean, but Natasha had never minded. She was used to drifting, used to relaxing through the uncomfortable parts of the connection, but even with all her foreknowledge, the little things were different. She still had to learn how to navigate Clint's mind.

The most curious thing was how the moment of connection felt like an eternity. People who drifted lived each others' lives in a split second; the moment you connected with another brain, you knew everything about that person. She was told this time and again by her trainers, and she told it to the other recruits that she'd met over the years with the idea that you could somehow prepare another person for the drift.

Nothing could ever prepare you for that first contact. Nothing.

Melding with Clint was a warm rush of colors and images, some flowing past too quickly to really consider and others lingering painfully long as she experienced his life. Most of it was just sensations – the memory of a smile or a ghostly embrace. Some things, though, stood out. Important things.

She was wondering what he was seeing inside her head, what things were sticking out for him when the wave of raw energy that was Clint hit her.

_she was three years old and holding on to the bars of a wooden crib while her brother grabbed at her ankles through the slats_

_she was seven and had to explain the bruises on her arms to her teacher_

_she was ten and a man in a blue uniform was telling her that her father and mother were dead_

_fifteen and she and her brother were running away from a foster family to join the circus_

_she was sixteen and she lost her virginity to the contortionist with the crooked smile_

_a hammerhead kaiju attacked the city they were traveling through and everyone died except her and her brother because they'd snuck off to hang out with some local teenagers_

_drinks on her twenty-first birthday with her brother_

_tony stark's smile when he hired her to develop weapons_

_a factory accident and a funeral and she was no longer someone's brother_

_the chill in the air when she stepped off the plane in russia_

_fighting with the pretty red-headed woman and the sting of the cold shower she'd taken afterward_

_sleeping, eating, dancing, swimming, drifting . . ._

"Holy shit, you weren't kidding,” Clint said out loud, drawing her out of their memories and into the present. “Did you really short-sheet Yelena when you were thirteen?”

“She stole my . . .” she said, a little breathless from the thrill of the connection. They were drift compatible, all right.

“Chocolate ration,” he finished for her, and they both smiled. The shared memory only lasted for a moment, though, because it was time to move. Regardless of the strength of the connection (all signs pointed to strong), they had shit to do.

The first thing she noticed was that they weren't in the machine the simulator defaulted to.

“This is _Vdova_ ,” she said, not bothering to keep the surprise out of her voice. He'd feel it anyway.

“Yep,” he said, and then she saw his most recent past, saw him walking into the computer room and handing the programer the specs of the upgraded _Vdova_ , saw him asking that they load those instead of whatever they had been planning.

“You good?” he asked, worried that he'd made a mistake, that he'd somehow overstepped his bounds.

She grinned. “Oh, hell yes.”

She walked him through their first steps together, guiding him as they calibrated their connection. When she brought up her fists, she felt Clint staring at his own hands; she watched him do it through his eyes, and no matter how often she'd done this, that would never not be cool.

Clint laughed at her stray thought.

“I'm glad to see I'm not the only one,” he said, and then his thoughts meandered elsewhere. It stood to reason that if she was inside his body, then he . . .

“Not so fast, hot sauce. It's still my body.”

 _And what a body_ , he thought. He remembered she could hear everything in his head the moment the thought entered his mind, and she felt her cheeks heat up with sympathetic embarrassment.

That was one of the problems with drifting – you couldn't cut off a stray thought once begun, not really. You were usually too busy in a real jaeger to focus on anything but taking out the enemy, but events tended to play out a little differently in the simulator. There was a safety net here, and it was easy to let yourself be lulled into a sense of security.

“It's okay,” she said, and then she deliberately remembered the first time she'd drifted with James and he'd treated her to a full rundown of what he referred to as his “manscaping routine”. When he'd tried to stop, the images had only come faster, and he'd bombarded her with flashes of razors and tweezers and sensitive areas.

Clint laughed. “Okay, yeah, I see your point,” he said. “Still, sorry about that. I'll try to keep little Clint in check.”

“I'd appreciate that,” she said mildly. “Think you can focus long enough to work through some basic attack moves?”

“I thought you'd never ask.”

They went through her usual warm-up routine, the one she'd done since she was a child - a simple set of kicks and punches before some combination moves. Clint hadn't ever done this before, not technically, but _she_ had, and so the whole procedure was facilitated by their connection.

Absorbed recollections were no substitute for muscle memory, and Clint stumbled a little as they started in on the more difficult moves.

“Easy does it,” she said when he lifted his arms too early. “Don't fight the connection. Let me guide you.”

She was pleased to find that he was a fast and willing learner. Five minutes into the test and they were already moving together like they were old friends.

_See? I told you to give him a chance._

Momentary confusion flickered over their connection, but then the assessor's voice came loud in their headsets.

“Looking good, you two. You ready to really put that connection through its paces?”

He meant a kaiju, of course, and Clint and Natasha both perked up.

“Bring it on,” one of them said or maybe it was both, but that didn't matter in the slightest.

The roar of the kaiju was one she had never acclimatized to, and it sent a shiver rolling up her spine. She ignored it.

“Sensors indicate that we've got incoming on our six,” Clint said. Without another word, they turned.

The beast was one she'd seen before, one she'd studied, but then, everybody on the planet had seen this guy before. The Room made her study all the kaiju, made her memorize their attacks and weaknesses, all in an effort to make her a more efficient killer.

It worked. Within seconds of recognizing Onibaba, the category 2 that leveled Tokyo back when she was a kid, she already had a plan of attack, already knew how she would make her approach.

“You take lead, Barton,” she said, consciously taking a step back. “Let's see what you've got.”

They started running for the kaiju at a clip, closing the gap between them and the beast in a matter of seconds. Onibaba roared again, louder this time because they were closer, but neither one of them flinched.

Onibaba turned to face them, reaching up with one massive claw. As a unit, she and Clint raised their right arm to smack her hand away, and they countered with a left hook across the jaw. The sound of metal on flesh reverberated through the air.

Clint whooped.

“Don't get cocky,” she said. “She ain't finished yet.”

They were grappling with the struggling kaiju now, but that didn't seem to phase Clint.

“Oh, come on! That was a beautiful shot! Look at her jaw? Isn't that worth a little celebration?” he was excited, and it was difficult not to let the rush of adrenaline wash over her, too.

She didn't even get out a word of protest before the kaiju broke free and sideswiped them with her head. They stumbled backward.

“Oh, she wants to play, huh?” Clint muttered. “Engage the Bite.”

She blinked as she processed what he meant. She'd never referred to a plasma cannon as anything other than its name, but Clint had apparently spent a lot of time designing the upgrade to the _Vdova_ , and he thought of it affectionately as the Widow's Bite.

The Bite was a nasty little contraption and a definite step up from her previous cannon – this one didn't have its accelerator head placed in the hand of the jaeger, but rather in a bracelet-like structure around each of the _Vdova_ 's wrists.

She grinned wickedly. That meant she could still use her hands while the cannon was charging.

“Oh, please,” she said, knowing that he felt her deep pleasure over the upgrade, knowing that he understood she was just riding his ass. “You couldn't come up with something more original?”

“I dunno,” he said as they parried another attack. “I think it's kind of snappy.”

The Bite was charged. She knew instinctively to clasp her fists, and then they deployed the dual bursts. Onibaba had been in the middle of opening her mouth to bite at them.

That would be a difficult task to accomplish without a jaw.

They made quick work of the beast after that, not even bothering to recharge the Bite. She'd wanted to try out the ranged weapon, the bow she'd seen him install, but there was no time for that, no purpose as they battled with their fists.

Onibaba fought mightily as she went down, but in the end, down she went, and the newest team to pilot _Chernaya Vdova_ had its first kill.

"In simulation,” Natasha corrected Clint's thought.

He snorted. “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”

***

“Where'd you learn phrases like that anyway?” he asked later when they were pulling off their suits. “When we were drifting, you said, 'she ain't finished yet'. What's up with that?”

Natasha raised her eyebrow. “How do you know that's not how I've always talked?”

“Probably something about that accent,” he said, nudging her with his shoulder. “You didn't learn English until your late teens, either.”

That much was true, and he knew it. He'd been there, after all.

She shrugged and focused her gaze on her boot laces.

“James talked like that,” she said quietly.

“Ah.”

They were quiet for a while, and just at the point where the air in the room was starting to feel tense, Clint spoke.

“So what did you think about the Bite?” he asked, even though he already knew. She'd practically crowed with exhilaration after that first shot, after all.

“I hope that it works as well in reality as it did in simulation,” she said, seizing the opportunity for distraction. James was no so long dead that thoughts of him couldn't make her cry. “It was sufficient.”

"Sufficient?” Clint said with mock outrage. “That's all I get? I'll have you know that the Bite is revolutionary! Tony Stark guaranteed me funding for the next five years because of that thing! I can't believe . . .”

He continued to rant about his creation all the way to the mess, and by the time they'd arrived, she'd forgotten about her little moment of sorrow.

Director Udinov was there to meet them when they stepped inside.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” he said. Apparently word still traveled fast in this place.

“Thank you, sir,” she said.

“When do you think you'll be ready for a proper field test?” Udinov asked, but what he meant was when did she think they'd be ready to take _Chernaya Vdova_ out.

She glanced at Clint, gauging his reaction. His eyes were sparkling with excitement. He'd be willing to go out tonight if they'd let him. She wanted to give in, wanted to say the words that would get them in the _Vdova_ as soon as possible, but there was a hard pit in her stomach, one that grew and reached up into her throat and strangled those words.

She couldn't.

“I'd like to take a few days,” she said, watching Clint sag a little as she spoke. “We need to run through a couple more sim trials.”

Udinov's eyes flicked back and forth between her and Clint, obviously getting two different reactions. Finally, he nodded curtly.

“Very well, Romanova. You've got three. Make them count.”

Udinov dismissed them, and she spun on her heel and headed for the line of people waiting for dinner before Clint could say anything.

He waited until they were sitting before he spoke.

“Mind telling me what that was about?”

“What _what_ was about?” she asked, concentrating intently on moving her potatoes from one compartment of her tray to the other, piece by piece.

“Why aren't you more excited about getting back out there?” he asked. “I mean, I would have thought you'd be itching for it after today.”

He wasn't wrong. There was no denying that a part of her, a very big part, had been screaming to get back in the cockpit ever since she woke up in that hospital bed. Hell, half of her good dreams involved that damn machine.

So why the hell was she so afraid of it?

She threw her fork down in frustration and put her head in her hands.

“Natasha?” he asked tentatively. “What's going on?”

“I . . . I don't know if I can,” she whispered, afraid that saying it out loud would make it true.

She heard him swallow, could almost hear him mulling over what to say even though they weren't connected.

At last he said, “Okay.”

She looked up. “What?”

“Look, I won't lie and say that this isn't a dream come true for me,” he said solemnly. “But if you can't do this, we won't.”

She blinked. That reaction was . . . unexpected. She'd thought he would try to convince her by pouting or yelling or literally anything else, and yet everything about his demeanor was telling her that he was giving her the truth.

In that moment, she made up her mind. 

 

 

*  _Parthos ferocis vexet eques metuendus hasta_ \- Let the rider feared because of his spear trouble the fierce Parthians.

All Latin translations are my own. 


	5. Est et fideli tuta silentio merces*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to eiluned for the beta.

Two days bled into three and then five, and before she knew it, she was packing her bags. She and Clint were bound for the coast, their helicopter scheduled for after breakfast, and time inexorably marched on.

Loathe as she was to admit it, there was a niggling doubt in the back of her head, one that told her that, no, she wasn't ready for this, not yet, maybe not ever, and how sure could she really be that Clint was the right person for the job if they'd only ever drifted in simulation? She could feel the uncertainty chewing at her, creeping into her thoughts and trying to make her change her mind even if the rest of her ached to get back into a real cockpit, to hook up to the _Vdova,_ to return home.

Then there was the other thing, the old, familiar twinge deep in her guts every time she was in a room with Clint.

She'd been resolutely telling herself that she was getting sick. The latest strain of the flu had been making the rounds on base (germs didn't care about the apocalypse, apparently), and she hadn't exactly been careful about washing her hands.

Like she always had, she pushed everything else aside in favor of putting one foot in front of the other.

She could do this. _They_ could do this.

If she was silent and brooding over unexpressed reservations, then Clint was loose-lipped and effusive as he flitted from one conversation to the next, willing to talk the ear off anybody who would give him a minute. He was thrilled about this chance, the emotion writ large in his every movement, the perpetual smile on his face, and by the time they'd left the mess, every person in the room knew it.

His excitement was not as catching as she'd hoped.

Truth be told, she felt worse as the day dragged on, and instead of coming out of her shell, she retreated further into it, so much so that by the time they touched down at the international base that was to be their new home, she didn't even spare him a glance as she debarked, brushing past him with more force than necessary in her haste to get away.

She could feel his look of surprise and confusion prickling at the back of her neck as she hurried off to her bunk assignment. She needed to be alone. She needed to think. She needed . . . not to be here, with him.

In his favor, he lasted an entire hour before knocking at her door.

She closed her eyes and took a breath, then swung the door open.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.” He looked over her shoulder into her bunk. “Came to see if you ended up with the same plastic mattress and fifteen thread count sheets they gave me across the hall.”

 _Liar_ , she thought, but the first lightness she'd felt all day was threatening to stretch itself across her face.

She took a step to the side and swept her arm back to invite him inside. “Feel free to find out for yourself.”

His left eye quirked with victory, but he didn't say a word. She closed the door behind him, and the strange flutter that had been plaguing her returned in force.

She swallowed.

Clint laughed as he touched her sheets, still operating on his flimsy pretense.

“I see seniority doesn't get you much around here,” he joked.

“Nah, I just put those out in case you stopped by,” she said. “Didn't want to make you jealous.”

When he grinned at her, she knew that she'd made a mistake.

“Oh, so you were waiting for me,” he said, moving in her direction. She forced herself not to take a step back, not to retreat. This was her territory, dammit. She crossed her arms over her chest, willing herself to believe that the gesture wasn't defensive.

Maybe it would have gone better if she'd had a snappy retort to go with the pose, but when she opened her mouth, all that came out was air.

Clint frowned. “You okay?”

Well, shit, he wasn't supposed to be _nice._ That just made everything more complicated.

She turned on her heel, unable to take the weight of his concern any longer.

“I'm fine,” she said, scrubbing at her eyes. She felt hot all of a sudden, and she couldn't get enough air into her lungs. What the fuck was wrong with her? Maybe it really was that damn flu after all.

He put his hand on her shoulder.

“Tasha?” he said, and the concern in his voice absolutely enraged her, took her over, possessed her, made her want to punch him square in the face for daring to touch her like he knew her, like they were friends, like he was feeling the same mix of confusion and excitement and fear that she was.

She whipped around, ready to give him a piece of her mind, intending to kick him out of her room because he had no damn business being in here with her when she didn't even know which side was up.

And then the alarm went off.

Kaiju.

They were up.

The confusion on Clint's face gave way to certainty as the klaxon blared.

“I'll meet you there,” he said, already walking swiftly for the door. There was no need to clarify where “there” was – even if they'd been headed for an argument likely to rattle the walls a moment before, she was a professional above all else, and she'd memorized the floor plan of this place days ago.

She shucked the clothes she'd been wearing, leaving them in a heap on the floor as she rifled through her pack for her jumpsuit. Her anger hadn't dissipated, though, not by a long shot, and she shoved her legs into the suit, zipped herself inside with too much force, trying to refocus her emotion into action, hoping that some of her rage would be gone by the time she made it to the loading area because she really didn't want someone else mucking about in her head while she felt like this.

The thought just pissed her off more.

She laced her boots, and then she was out the door.

This was not the time for this sort of shit, she knew, and she hated herself for not recognizing that sooner. She had a job to do, one that required his help, but that was it. Just because they were copilots didn't mean they were compatible elsewhere.

 _You should give him a chance_.

“Shut up,” she hissed, and she didn't even realize that she'd been talking out loud until a passing man in a uniform gave her a bewildered look.

Great.

Barton was already there when she arrived, two technicians helping him into the rest of his suit. She didn't spare him a glance.

She didn't wait for the techs to finish with Barton, just began the process of suiting up on her own. She could get through most of it without any help, and the quicker she was ready to go, the sooner all of this would be over.

Her fingers fumbled with the locking mechanism on her breast plate. She forced the shudder from her hands.

She preceded Barton into the cockpit, but he grabbed her arm, stopping her, invading her space again like she owed him something, like he had the right to touch her.

“Tasha . . .”

She whirled.

“Let's just get one thing straight,” she said, her fingers clasping the his arm so tightly she could almost feel the cool metal through her glove.

He didn't flinch as he looked at her, just waited for her to continue.

“You are not a replacement for him,” she said vehemently. “You will never replace him.”

She didn't know where the words were coming from. Was that really what this was about? James? The realization hit her like a ton of bricks.

“Wasn't trying to,” he said calmly, reasonably. “I know I can't.”

She dropped his arm.

“Look, Barton, I . . .”

“No, you look,” he said, cutting her off. He wasn't angry, but there was something strange in his voice, a vehemence she'd never heard from him before. “We need to work together. You're going to have to let me try. There's a monster on the way, and we've got to stop it.”

“Don't you think I know that?” she asked, adjusting her armor needlessly.

“Do you?” he said quietly.

“Just do your damn job, Barton, and I'll do mine.”

“You gonna let me?” he asked astutely. She didn't bother to grace the comment with a response.

They had a kaiju to kill.

***

Syncing with Natasha was different this time.

Before, when they'd connected, it had been a rush of adrenaline and memories. It had been an easy, comfortable thing, more of a hug than a handshake.

Not this time.

Her mind was wild, unsettled and confused when they entered the drift, and he felt her fight to clear her mind at the admonition of the technicians in the control room.

He tried to ignore it, tried to focus on his own elation at finally being inside the _Chernaya Vdova_ instead of a simulation chamber, and it worked right up to the point that the kaiju rose up out of the depths in front of them, its mouth wide as it roared.

“Holy fuck,” one of them said (probably him, because Natasha was still too quiet).

All the hours they'd logged in the simulator weren't for naught, however. They didn't need to discuss a thing. They fought.

He was so focused on the grasp and pull of the fight, so focused on the avoidance of tooth and claw, that he didn't really notice exactly when he started seeing a second set of images overlaying the readouts in front of his eyes.

He raised his arm to deflect a blow from the monster's left arm, and then he reached out for its jaw.

“Tasha?” he asked. “What's going on?”

She didn't answer, but she brought up the _Vdova_ 's other arm to hold the animal steady while he pummeled it.

“Tasha?”

She wasn't all there, not really. He knew that she could still see what was going on in reality, but bit by bit, she was starting to float away from the present, and her memories were threatening to engulf him, too.

“Natasha!” he shouted as they broke the kaiju's jaw. It roared in pain, lashing out with its claws, raking the talons down the front of the jaeger.

Shit, shit, _shit_ , he needed her all here. Now.

“Natasha, you need to snap out of it,” he said, starting the sequence to charge the Widow's Bite. “Natasha!”

He watched – or maybe he felt – her start to slide off into her memory, into the past.

“Natasha, stop!” he screamed, but he felt her ignore him, felt her push past him in her quest to get the damn job done. The sentiment would be laudable if what she was seeing were real. It wasn't though, no matter how much the battle they were in the middle of aped the one in her mind.

He tried to duck to dodge a kick, but unthinkably, he was no longer in control of the jaeger. He couldn't change anything, couldn't move anything, couldn't _do_ anything. He struggled against what felt like a wet cloth draped over his face, preventing him from seeing anything in front of him, but it was no use.

Natasha had pushed him out in her panic.

She drew her arms back as far as she could, then she swung forward, her palms connecting around the head of a kaiju that was long dead.

Clint was still screaming her name.

***

He must have blacked out for a second because one moment Natasha had been shutting him out, wresting control of the jaeger from him as she pounded on the kaiju, and the next minute they were alone in the water.

He breathed, happy to be alive.

The relief only lasted a moment, though, because as soon as he realized where he was, he realized that he couldn't feel Natasha in his head, and he should. They were still in the _Vdova_ , still hooked up to the machine, and he could feel her through the drift.

He could feel her though the connection, but his thoughts were his own inside his head, and that was very, very wrong.

He struggled to turn in his harness, calling her name out loud, hoping that she could hear him, but there was nothing coming from her, no response at all. They were connected, but it was . . . empty.

And then he felt another presence.

“She's RABITing.”

Clint was confused. Who the fuck was in his head?

Before he had a chance to ask the question, the voice said, “I had to cut in for a sec. Sorry,” it said. Clint didn't think the voice was being sincere.

“Who the fuck are you?” Clint asked because, really, what the fuck was a _third_ person doing inside the drift?

“You have to calm her down,” the voice said.

Clint recognized it somehow, like a distant memory that had been replaced with other, fresher, more recent events.

“Don't you start, too.” The voice was insistent. “You need to bring her back.”

Clint was reaching out for her then, trusting the voice without thinking too much about it because he got the impression that whatever the presence had done, it accounted for the reason why he was currently breathing and not being tugged out of the _Vdova_ like a sardine from a can.

In his mind, Clint could see her lying on the beach, the tide water slowly rising around her. She was in an older style suit, one that he only knew from news footage and Natasha's memories.

“Tash?” he asked quietly, not sure what the rules were when you were walking around inside someone's mind. She didn't stir.

“I think you need to do more than that,” the voice said, but it was no longer disembodied. There was a man standing next to him. Clint looked up.

He blinked in surprise.

“You're . . .”

The man nodded. “James Barnes, yes. I'd shake your hand, but that's not really important right now.”

“But how . . .”

“Am I here?” James shrugged. “I'm not, exactly. I'm more like a ghost, maybe. A fragment left over from when I died.”

It was strange how easily Clint accepted all of this.

Natasha groaned on the sand at his feet. Clint dropped down to his knees, turned her over onto her back, moving her face away from the water.

“Tasha?” he asked again, wiping her hair out of her face. Her face fell to the side, and he thought he heard her moan again, but she didn't open her eyes.

“What happened?” Clint asked, looking up at James, who towered over them. “Why won't she wake up?”

“She thinks I'm dead.”

Clint raised his eyebrow, and James chuckled.

“No, I know. I _am_ dead.” He gestured at Natasha's uniform. “She's reliving that day. It took our guys hours to find her afterward. They found her on the beach, passed out.”

Clint couldn't stop touching her face and neck, brushing the wet sand away, feeling for a pulse even though none of this was real. It all existed in their minds.

“Still feels real, though,” James said. When Clint would have complained about the invasion of privacy, James added, “Can't get mad at a dead guy. Besides, I'm not really here, remember?”

Clint thought that through. He decided to trust the . . . whatever he was. “Can you wake her?” he asked.

“Maybe.” James closed his eyes.

After a moment, Natasha began to mumble in his arms.

“Do me a favor?” James asked, but when Clint tried to look at him, his eyes slid away, as if the man were going out of focus. “If she doesn't remember this, can you tell her . . .”

A dozen things floated through Clint's mind then, things said and unsaid, regrets and hopes for the future, all of them bittersweet because he . . . no, not him, _James_ was dead and was never going to get to do any of those things.

But he could say goodbye.

Clint nodded. “I'll tell her.”

“Thanks,” James said. Then his presence was gone just like it had arrived and Clint was alone.

***

She didn't remember what happened, except she did because she was still connected to Clint as he relived the experience. She'd known that something was up, that it wasn't normal to hear your dead lover rattling around in your head during waking hours, but to have independent confirmation was a little bizarre.

So she ignored Clint, carefully blanking her mind as they returned the _Vdova_ to dock to the exuberant congratulations of everyone in the hangar.

Her smiles felt like lies.

Like she knew he would, Clint followed her back to her quarters after the debrief. He'd barely said a word during the meeting, letting her do the majority of the talking and only answering the questions that were posed to him in the simplest terms.

He waited to say something until the door to her room closed behind them.

“What happened back there?”

He could mean any of a dozen things. Why had she RABITed? Why didn't she tell him about James? How had any of it happened in the first place? Whatever he meant, though, it didn't matter because his words, the way he acted, the way he spoke made it sound like he was protecting her. Like he wanted to make sure that no one with authority had any idea what had happened inside the _Vdova_ tonight.

And that pissed her off.

“How the hell should I know,” she snapped.

“You almost got us killed!” He raised his voice as he spoke, getting right up into her face. She could feel his anger rolling off him in waves. Anger at her.

She didn't blame him.

“Looks like you're alive to me,” she said, still trying to cling to her anger, even if it was an exercise in futility. She deflated.

“Only because the ghost living inside your head helped me pull you back together,” he said.

She blinked.

“Ghost?” No matter what she saw in Clint's mind, she hadn't really believed it, couldn't really believe that a part of James had been inside of her for all this time.

Clint took a step back and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, ghost. Imprint. Memory,” he said. “Whatever you want to call him.”

Her heart hollowed out.

“James?” she finally managed.

“Yeah,” he said. “James.”

She sat heavily on the edge of her cot.

“He brought me to you on the beach,” Clint said. “And once you came back to yourself, he . . .”

“He said goodbye,” she finished. She stared at her hands, feeling guilty that she didn't feel worse. She was sad, but it was the distant kind, a sadness that was more regret than anything else. She felt the bed dip beside her.

“Yeah,” Clint said quietly. He reached between her knees and took her hand in his. It didn't feel like an invasion of space this time. It just felt . . . nice.

She leaned toward him and rested her head on his shoulder. Her heart should have been empty, but in the absence of the anger that had been with her for so long, she found that there was something else there.

“Why?” she asked after a while.

“Why what?”

“Why did you want this so bad?” she asked, sitting up straight so she could turn and look at him. “You must have known something like this could happen.”

He chuckled. “Something like your dead co-pilot saving us from the inner reaches of your mind?”

“Well, when you put it like that,” she laughed, then sobered. “No, I mean . . .”

She trailed off, not knowing how to phrase the next part, and she wished desperately that they were drifting right now, that their minds were connected. She wouldn't have to find the words then, wouldn't need to say them out loud because he would know them through the roil of emotions that threatened to crack the walls around her heart.

Maybe they didn't need to be connected, though, because he could read her like a book anyway.

“Don't you already know?” he asked, a little wildness peeking back from behind his eyes. “How don't you?”

Oh.

She did know. Of course she knew. She'd denied it and had hidden it away behind the wall she put up to protect herself, the one that kept her sane after she'd lost her previous partners. She knew because she'd been there when they'd connected, she'd seen the way he thought about her. No, more than seen, she'd _experienced_ it, and even though it scared her to her bones to let someone else in (again, oh, god, again), she felt her resistance begin to fray.

She reached up to touch his cheek, caressed him there for a moment as she met his eyes, and then carefully, hesitantly, maybe even a little shyly, she leaned forward, putting her weight on her knees, and she kissed him.

The dam burst.  

 

 

* _est et fideli tuta silentio merces -_ Indeed there is secure reward for lasting silence. 

Latin translations are my own. 


End file.
